Radical Self-Forgiveness - Exercise 5: IDENTIFYING MY LOST SELVES

This exercise will be short, yet as important as the rest. First, let me explain the "Lost" self to you. This is the self that we have lost by giving them up or shutting them down OR trading them away for love, money, power, status, or something similar.

There is a short list (in the book "RADICAL SELF-FORGIVENESS", by Colin Tipping) of things that are most commonly given away in pursuit the aforementioned items. A good example would be the classic Hollywood cliche' of people "sleeping their way to the top". Although a prevalent act in Hollywood, this kind of behavior happens all over the place, especially in the workplace. People will give up sex, innocence, trust, integrity... a combination of all of them... or other things, in order to improve their career pursuits.

It isn't just sexual related sacrifices that we make, as there are any number of things that we may give up in pursuit of something that we think are more important. Some people will give up their freedom or their happiness in order to secure a relationship with somebody who isn't the best match, but is desirous in other ways (looks and appearances, etc.).

I will now go through the list and write down some of the items that I feel I have sacrificed, at one point in my life or another, in order to get something else. Before doing this, I would like to point out that, for the most part, I have always been someone that does what I want. I am not particularly ambitious in the way of many professional people. I don't sacrifice my standards or personal beliefs in order to get gain. I have, however, occasionally sacrificed one of my "selves" in order to find happiness in another part of my life. Sometimes the trade-off has been worth it, other times not.

Probably one of my greatest sacrifices... and by great, I mean big... NOT good, was back in the late 1990's, when my marriage was all but dead. It was functioning, but barely. In the early days of the internet, I became emotionally attached to a young woman thousands of miles away. It wasn't a sexual thing. I didn't even know what she looked like, until some time into the "relationship". In the end, it all blew up in my face, and I had betrayed my wife's trust. In essence, I gave up MY trust. The trust she had in me. Over the years, we tried to make it work, but in the end that trust which I had sacrificed years before, cost me dearly. I gave up trust in pursuit of what I thought was happiness. It was happiness then... albeit short lived... and is now, 14 years later, probably one of my biggest regrets in my life.

Part of my reason for going through this exercise is to purge my conscience of these things that have burdened me for so many years. With any luck, when all is said and done, I will have restored any lost "selves" that were sacrificed, and I will be able to move forward with my life a complete person, with my integrity intact. In the future, I don't ever want to sacrifice any of my precious "selves" in the pursuit of something that I may want at that moment.